No, Socialism Won’t Kill the Democratic Party

The democratic socialists are fighting the battles the Democratic Party have refused to wage. This is the way.


New York Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani, center, celebrates with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), left, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), right, during an election rally on October 26, 2025 at Forest Hills Stadium in the Queens borough of New York City. The mayoral election will take place on November 4, 2025.
(Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)

Corbin Trent
Jun 28, 2026

Common Dreams


Maybe you’ve heard the phrase means of production and maybe you haven’t. It basically means the tools, land, factories, machines, infrastructure, and systems a society uses to make the material stuff of life. Who owns those means, who controls them, and who benefits from them is one of the oldest fights in politics.

The communists, at their extreme, think the state should own and control all of it. The capitalists, at their extreme, think it should be completely in private hands. Socialists like me think there ought to be a blend of public and private ownership, that capitalism and socialism work best when paired. The neoliberals, which is mostly what we’ve got now, think our future should be in private control but paid for by the people, maybe with a guardrail or two set up between the people and the private sector’s insatiable desire for profit.



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We fought about this hard in the early 1900s. There was a big movement around labor and organizers and workers, and a lot of those folks were actual communists. The communists were fighting for the means of production and the capitalists were fighting for it too, and they fought tooth and nail. The workers were unionizing and fighting for better rights and better conditions, and these were actual fights, with guns and sticks and knives, and people got killed, mostly workers. They fought for more rights. They fought for the 40-hour week. They fought for overtime. They fought for working conditions that were safe and not deadly, and in a lot of cases they won. They won those fights with blood. They won those fights with effort. They won those fights by putting things on the line.

You might have heard of something called the weekend. Not the singer, though I love him. The idea that Monday through Friday is the work week and the weekend is for your life. You might have heard of the eight-hour day, that anything over eight hours is overtime. Both of those were brought to you by the labor movement, a labor movement that at one point was empowered not to fight for the members of its own labor union but empowered to fight for people who worked for a living. That was their mantra. That was their goal.

Then came the New Deal in the 30s, the people injecting themselves into the production of the things we needed to rebuild the country after the Great Depression. We did it through the Civilian Conservation Corps. We trained workers, we provided health care, and during the war we even created daycare centers so women could go into the factories. It was a real rebalancing of our economy between capital and labor, with the state taking part of the means of production, engineers and scientists doing the work for the people, paid for by the people, and then used by the people. Corporations got brought to heel for a while.

Then we beat the fascists, the Nazis in Germany and Italy and the imperialists in Japan, and right after that the Americans decided the biggest scourge, the biggest fear they had, was communism and socialism. Because we’d gotten a taste through the New Deal and the Arsenal of Democracy of what it was like to share in the growth, to share in the fruits of our own labor, and there was a fear that if we kept tasting it we’d decide we too deserved more, and that would mean the Vanderbilts and the railroad tycoons and the shipping barons and the oilmen would have less and the people who did the work would have more. So we fought it. We fought it through the McCarthy era, with propaganda, with all sorts of ideological battles. The idea of socialism and the idea of communism both lost. And the Democratic Party started moving away from its socialist roots and its socialist ideas toward what would ultimately become neoliberalism, the system we’ve got now.

We went through all of those fights, the prisons, the violations of the Constitution. We perverted ourselves in order to fight off socialism, to keep the means of production in the hands of the capitalists, because they alone were able to properly guide our system. And then what did they do with our productive capacity? What did they do with it through the 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000s and right up to today? They shipped it off to Mexico and China and Brazil. They gave away the very thing we fought over. And why? Because it was cheaper, more profitable, and they figured they could do it with impunity.

But when you take away people’s means of production, you also take away their means of making a living, their power and their value in life, economically and socially and every other way, and then you’ve got people fighting over what little is left, and it turns ugly and it turns dirty. Look at January 6th. Look at the riots and the protests during the Black Lives Matter movement. What you end up with is a police force that has to oppress, and private prisons that have to fill up, and a military-industrial complex that doesn’t care whether it’s participating in a genocide or not, because it’s about money and power. And ultimately what you end up with is a country that can’t defend itself or provide for itself, a giant welfare state leaning on the Chinese to make our goods and to buy our debt. A nation that no longer holds its own means of production, no longer holds its own means of making a living, no longer holds its independence, not in energy production, not in the ability to build housing or infrastructure or the things that make our lives better. We import all of it, because all we need is money, we can just make more money.

And that only works as long as the money stays in the hands of a few. All that money creation, all that expansion of wealth, would lead to massive inflation if it weren’t held by a few, and you can already see what it does, because it’s caused massive inflation in indexes and in asset prices. Bitcoin and Apple and the stock market have risen to unreasonable heights, heights that are detached from any reality. Tesla is worth more than the next 30 car companies combined, even though it doesn’t produce as much as any of the top ten and doesn’t make more profit than any of the top ten, and yet somehow it’s worth more. Why? Because the money that’s been created has caused that inflation, and the inflation stays at the top. It makes trillionaires and centibillionaires. If that same money had been shared with the rest of America without creating more productive capacity, without the ability to build more housing or train more doctors or build more hospitals, it would create massive inflation everywhere, because you’d have more money chasing fewer goods in a system that can’t produce the things anymore and just imports them. The inflation is real. It just stays at the top, in asset prices, instead of showing up at the grocery store.

So the means of production was a fight that working people lost and the capitalists won. And then the winners gave away the spoils of their own victory to other nations, because they aren’t patriots and they aren’t citizens of this country. They’re citizens of the world. They’re detached and untethered, private jets and private islands and private security forces, and at that level of wealth they don’t need this country to succeed.

But here’s the thing. The elite, for now, do need us more than we need them. We’re the ones propping them up right now.

The question with AI and robotics is not whether the machines will be powerful. They will be. The question is whether they become another offshore factory, another private island, another asset owned by people who do not need us, or whether they become part of a shared American capacity again.

We lost the last fight over the means of production, and then the winners gave it away. We should not let them do it twice.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Corbin Trent
Corbin Trent is an Appalachian-born general contractor and political organizer. He co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, helped recruit AOC, and served as her first communications director. He publishes AmericasUndoing.com, a project exposing America’s economic decline and calling for bold, public-led rebuilding. Find morework on his TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook channels.
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Cuba’s postponed transition

By Juan Triana Cordoví, Omar Everleny Pérez-Villanueva, Julio Carranza & Rafael Hernández

Published 28 June, 2026

First published in Spanish at Temas. Translation by LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Any Cuban who has been paying attention since 1993-94 knows that Cuban socialism has not been the same since then.

After socialism’s collapse in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union’s dismantlement, things in Cuba changed dramatically. The market and private sector were introduced, the US dollar was legalised, most state-owned land was redistributed and Cuba opened up to foreign investment. This not only created a new economy and new relationship with the world, but new perspectives on socialism as a system, including its reversibility.

These policies were initially justified as a response to the crisis known as the “Special Period in the Time of Peace”, or at least they were presented that way at the time. As the crisis eased — or so it seemed (for a time) — these changes slowed. Yet their ideological consequences (what sort of socialism are we building?), and especially their impact on social inequalities and poverty, continued to spread.

Policies that had levelled the playing field between different social classes and groups in Cuba, such as a very limited wage structure, a basic food basket subsidised through the ration card system (the “ration booklet”), price controls, free services and subsidies of all kinds, gradually faded away, formally or de facto. Wages and income diverged, access to foreign currency altered the established relationship between wages and training, and production levels failed to recover.

Despite the supposed temporary nature of the crisis, Cuba never returned to the level of well-being and the vision for the future that had existed, above all in the decade prior to the Special Period.

More than a decade after those measures — approved and implemented under Fidel Castro’s leadership — a document entitled “ Economic and Social Guidelines” was publicly discussed in a mass consultation and officially adopted at the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in 2011. Five years later, barely 23% of agreed-upon policies had been implemented.

In 2018, a public consultation on very broad constitutional reforms yielded unexpected results. These included the fact that the most controversial parts of the new text were not the radical changes to diversify means of production ownership, market expansion, or allowing private capital access to sectors such as agriculture and services (including those nationalised in 1960).

These transformations did not provoke opposition, despite their fundamental scope. The new Constitution, approved by an overwhelming majority in 2019, prioritised equity — instead of equality — and addressed income inequality without outlawing it.

From the early 1990s to now, more and more experts, within and outside Cuba’s institutions, have proposed a reform program that goes beyond the scope of an anti-crisis package.

Although none have proposed policies like those that marked socialism’s dismantlement in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, quite a few were branded emissaries of capitalism.

Despite the differences in documents issued over the past 30 years regarding the nature of Cuban socialism, misgivings towards any proposed reform persists to this day.

Following the United States' intervention in Venezuela on January 3, I [Rafael Hernández] asked a group of economists and political analysts the question: what should our key strategic priorities be to overcome the crisis while addressing the complexity of the moment?

Some readers told me clearly that my respondents’ answers were “excessive” (ie: neoliberal).

Now, the National Assembly of Popular Power (ANPP) has approved a reform program that far exceeds, in its radicalism and scope, anything these experts ever proposed. Nevertheless, views that identify reforms with the virus of capitalism persist.

If one reads, for example, foreign media outlets that are supposedly well-informed about what is happening now, one sees them equating recent transformations with concessions to capitalism and socialism’s definitive collapse. They are just like the local fundamentalists. It is as if nothing has changed in Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In an attempt to shed light on the complex questions arising from the 176 measures debated in the ANPP, I spoke to three pioneering economists who anticipated them in their writings and talks, and whose way of thinking, persistence and commitment I know well: Juan Triana Cordoví (JTC), Omar Everleny Pérez-Villanueva (OEP) and Julio Carranza (JCV).

I thank them for answering my multifaceted questions and for replying in record time.

According to some economists, the focus of the reforms is, or should be, expanding the private sector into all those activities where it could operate more efficiently than the state or public sector. Will this, or should this, be the focus of the proposed economic policy? Would this not imply, in the medium term, the private sector swallowing up the public sector?

JTC: There is not just one central focus in the reforms, but at least two or three. One is expanding the private sector and its role in the economy. Another is reforming state-owned enterprises, which has been postponed so many times.

I do not think the private sector can swallow up the public sector. The public sector is still very large and powerful; it would take a lot of work for the private sector to displace it, especially since it is still a nascent sector.

OEP: The private sector must play an essential role in the proposed economic policy. Not because it is private, but because Cuba’s problem is, more than financial, a problem of supply of goods and services. The state currently lacks the financial resources to produce what the private sector can.

I do not think it is going to swallow up the public sector. Everyone has their own space.

The first thing to define is the size of the public sector. Energy, steel, all those types of production requiring large amounts of capital, can only be guaranteed by the state.

But in retail, food, personal services, the private sector could fill a large hole.

In the past, the public sector has been inefficient for various reasons. The state has diverted resources generated by socialist state-owned enterprises. Those rules have to change.

JCV: A fundamental part of the current approach is granting businesses the recognition and powers they need to operate, whether state-owned, cooperative, private or mixed, whether national or foreign owned. They should all be integrated into state-regulated markets. State-owned enterprises should be subject to strategic and financial planning, not the still existing bureaucratic and administrative approach.

Prejudices against the private sector must be overcome. The sector must be given the role it deserves. The private and cooperative sectors have an important and essential role to play; their interests must be recognised and represented, but under no circumstances should these individual or business interests — however legitimate they are — be imposed above the general and overriding interests of the people and nation.

Of course, the fundamental, strategic means of production must remain under social ownership with legal protection. All efficient public enterprises must also be maintained and developed.

The state sector that emerges from this must be efficient and competitive. This does not preclude certain activities that, by definition, operate at a loss and, given their function, must be state subsidised. But these should be few and fully justified.

Key sectors such as education and health must also remain under state control and be allocated the needed resources, even if some specific activities within these sectors are transferred to the private sector. This is already happening with some pharmacies and optical and dental services, where ownership is mixed.

These measures will exacerbate social inequalities, but these must be regulated and accompanied by a progressive and rigorous tax policy. Income disparities must result from efficiency and hard work, not corruption and illicit activities. Social policies must be strengthened to support a weary and now impoverished population. The principle that no one should be left behind must be upheld.

We must prevent perverse privatisations carried out without a competitive tendering, which benefits special interest groups, many from the old bureaucracy. We saw what happened in Eastern Europe.

These dangers are present, and the means to anticipate and control them must be put in place. At the heart of this lies the participation and political power of the population, through the effective functioning of popular power institutions and the republic’s oversight bodies — its political and social institutions, first and foremost the PCC.

To adequately play this role, however, these institutions must be reformed, including the PCC. For the state, the Comptroller General's Office must play a crucial role, its function encompassing all sectors of the economy without unjustified exclusions.

The country's democratic institutions, first and foremost parliament, must have an active and diverse voice, reflecting Cuban society today and in the future.

An efficient public sector, with genuine autonomy to plan, decide on production, redistribute profits among its workers and involve them in decision-making, operate in the foreign exchange market, and establish agreements with other companies, whether public or private, national or foreign, seems like a very different beast from the current one. Is such a metamorphosis possible? What needs to happen to allow this transformation? And within what timeframe?

JTC: The transformation of state-owned enterprises must be deep and far-reaching. We can not expect it to happen quickly. But this metamorphosis, as you call it, can happen because, although this is sometimes overlooked, we have very capable entrepreneurs who have not been allowed to develop into true business leaders.

This transformation will not only take place through direct measures on state-owned enterprise management, but also through indirect actions. Some of the policies being discussed and approved today will compel this metamorphosis: participating in the foreign exchange market, establishing much more fluid relationships with foreign companies, and free exports and imports; all of this requires change in that sector.

What else should happen? Let entrepreneurs get their act together, or at the very least do not take away their initiative once they have started, which has happened.

It is very difficult to set a timeframe. It involves a learning process, which requires shedding old habits, unlearning them, adopting new ones and learning all over again. I would not dare set a timeframe for that process, but it will not be short — it will not happen in six months. Some Cuban companies started working with foreign firms and transformed themselves quickly, but it is always a complicated process, as unlearning and relearning is relatively complex.

OEP: There will be different stages to the reform. One stage, in the first two years, will be what some economists identify as a stabilisation stage. Next will come a stage of structural changes, of between two and five years, which is where the deepest changes will occur.

In the first two years, we must focus on three vital issues: energy, food and infrastructure. Cuba’s population faces critical problems, such as water, solid waste collection and other public services that need restoring.

Then we have to determine which sectors and areas are going to be prioritised.

I still see tourism as important, and the possibility of private tour operators and tourism agents emerging offers some assurance that this sector can recover. For example, if a small hotel — say with 30 or 40 rooms — or hostels and motels can be managed by a private entity, why not do it, especially if foreigners already own them?

The government has a very concrete plan and has been very skillful, very pragmatic in recent days in raising proposals that it would not have thought of at another time.

We need to switch to private foreign exchange bureaus (CADECAs), because currency is being exchanged on the street anyway and that is money is not reaching the state. Why not establish CADECAs and charge a tax on transactions?

Another important step is eliminating the monopoly on foreign trade, so that all forms of ownership can import and export directly. If someone wants to do so through an experienced state-owned enterprise, they should be able to. But it should not be mandatory.

Likewise, we must eliminate the employment agencies, which have been an obstacle for foreign investors. And, above all, we must tackle the external debt. If the debt is not resolved, a lack of financing will continue.

An efficient public sector concentrates its resources in specific entities. For these to be efficient, they require a law governing businesses that places them all on an equal footing. This will allow the state sector to participate in the foreign exchange market and retain a portion of its profits to restore production and offset capital depletion.

With the rules applied to date, certain goods and services cannot be guaranteed. Of course not! If a state-owned company is profitable, but the state collects those profits for a “common good” — such as producing certain goods for the entire population — that may be justified. However, it undermines the company’s capacity.

In the medium term, they should be given the same opportunities that the most dynamic sector of the economy has enjoyed to date, which is currently Cuba’s largest food importer (the figures back this). The public or state sector does not have the ability to use remittances to decide where to buy and at what prices.

Autonomy has to be real. I believe the path ahead will include improved competitive conditions.

JCV: The current situation presents urgent needs that must be addressed as a priority. A comprehensive and deep transformation of the economic model is also needed. These are interdependent aspects, but should not be confused.

The immediate response to these urgent needs is determined by the fundamental problems affecting the population: energy, food, water, health, public hygiene, mobility, etc. This response requires access to more external resources. That is why the issue of debt and access to credit, investment, etc, is also a priority. The proposed measures include ways to address these urgent needs.

The other aspect is the comprehensive transformation of the economic model. This is necessarily a slower process, although it must be sped up as much as possible, and must begin with restoring macroeconomic equilibriums: fiscal deficits, inflation, external deficits, etc. This process takes longer because there is so much that needs to be transformed.

It is essential to define stages, spheres of action, general and specific objectives, indicators, and so on. Above all, to have a clear strategic vision and the political capacity to correct inevitable deviations. Otherwise, we could end up with a grim and undesirable outcome, from which there may be no coming back. I have written about at length and proposed all of this since my 1995 book, and in many subsequent texts with corresponding updates.

Today, politics is more important than ever, despite what some may think. Not to obstruct or halt the reform process, but to guide it along the needed path while always responding to the nation’s interests and not those of spurious sectors or groups, much less imperialist pressures. Therein lies a fundamental challenge. In a recent article, I said ideas, not uncontrolled events, should be the driving forces behind this process.

One feature of this new socialism, as set out in the new constitution, is decentralisation, particularly transferring powers to local levels. Seven years after that constitutional provision was adopted, we still do not have a law granting these powers. However, decentralisation and the strategic role of municipalities are now being emphasised. Are local governments prepared for this autonomy? Are they capable of administering their resources, handling domestic and foreign investment, designing fiscal and employment policies, overseeing basic services and adapting social policies to their needs? What needs to happen for local governments to fully assume this role? What are the risks involved in decentralisation?

JTC: I do not think local governments are prepared for the autonomy granted to them. That is the simple answer.

As for what needs to happen for them to be ready, one thing already happening is being granted areas of responsibilities, certain rights and obligations. The other thing that needs to happen is training suitable personnel for the task.

If you look at local governments today, they are not only “poor” because they are in poor areas, but because their staff are probably not the most suitable, although, mind you, they may well be the most dedicated.

Undoubtedly, there are many risks involved in decentralisation, ranging from misinterpretation of national policies to corruption. I do not dare list them all as new ones keep popping up.

Having the ability to interpret national policies, adapt them to local needs and generate one’s own policies involves risks and, undoubtedly, possible mistakes. I would rather take that risk than do nothing at all.

OEP: One shortcoming affecting both local and central levels is the lack of staff preparedness. Sometimes, someone appointed is unprepared or lacks expertise. Given the challenges ahead, local governments should be better prepared and granted the prerogatives they lack — powers that have been announced but, in practice, not granted. Local autonomy must be accompanied by training and incentives to enable leaders to effectively manage resources at that level.

If salaries are low and unmotivating, people will not be willing to take on municipal leadership roles. Before assuming positions, say in municipal education, people will be more interested in working in the private sector, where they can earn 10 times more. All these imbalances must be corrected. But I do believe in local government; we must work hard to prepare for what lies ahead.

There are indeed risks with decentralisation, but we must accept them. Previously, central government measures were implemented in a context where the state could manage resources. Today it does not have them, nor will it in the coming years, because today we are on our own. This means we will not have the access to the credit or allies we need, as we lost them due to mismanagement.

If a friend gives you, say, a fleet of buses for your public transport system, and you do not pay for them, they will not give you spare parts for those buses. That is how we have treated friends such as China, who help by selling to us on short payment periods but at very low interest rates. They allowed us to pay with products such as nickel, but we stopped sending nickel because we no longer produce it.

All that needs to be corrected. That is the only way forward; there is no other option. We have to overcome all adversities, but this comes at a cost. Not so much a greater social cost, because social reform has already been implemented — I will tell you more about that later.

JCV: Decentralising to the municipalities must be done with extreme care. It is positive and needed, and could make governance more democratic and efficient, but not if it is done in just any manner. Municipal decentralisation must not mean that the central government shirks its own, non-delegable, responsibilities.

A country is not simply the sum of its municipalities, not even in countries with strong federal structures. Municipalities are very different from each other, and their coordination and complementarity as parts of a whole is an inalienable responsibility of the central government.

Economic policy and implementing the national development strategy are central government responsibilities. Successful municipal decentralisation should not mean eliminating the central government’s essential role, because we are one nation.

Also, for decentralisation to function properly, municipalities must have the resources needed. First and foremost, they need capable staff and officials. Meritocracy (ability, training, ethics, integrity, empathy and commitment) should determine appointments and selections at this level, as it should at all levels.

In general, the calibre of municipal officials and civil servants is below what is required for this complex function. Of course, this work should pay what it deserves.

Against a backdrop of undercapitalisation, lack of financing, high external debt, deteriorating infrastructure, and energy and food crises, where can the investment needed to revive the economy and restructure the model come from? Do Cuban emigrants have the capital and will to become that main source? To what extent do the political circumstances within the Cuban diaspora facilitate or jeopardise this? Would it be possible without the US and Cuba returning to the path of normalisation?

JTC: The investment needed to revive the economy and restructure the model can come from different sources.

One is foreign investment, which may feel encouraged by decisions to facilitate and expand opportunities in the country.

Another source could be the opportunities offered by the BRICS. This requires a thorough understanding of how to negotiate and participate within that framework.

A third source could be domestic capital — not just private capital, but also capital from successful state-owned enterprises that want to invest to grow and diversify. They should be allowed to.

There are also loans that multinational organisations and individual countries can provide. They are much harder to access these days, but I would not dismiss them entirely.

Finally, there is capital from Cubans living abroad. To what extent do political circumstances in the Cuban diaspora facilitate or jeopardise this? So far, the history of this relationship has been very complex — you know this far better than me. It means that a segment of that diaspora is very wary of investing in Cuba.

On the other hand, Cuba’s legal framework is still not well understood. It needs significant refinement and improvement to provide to investors in general, and particularly Cuban investors who have lived in Cuba. This uncertainty must be eliminated by creating a set of very clear rules that incentivise and guarantee this participation.

Most of the Cuban diaspora lives under the constant risk and threat of the restrictions the US government imposes on Cuba. They must constantly monitor whether they are breaching any US laws that could make them subject to reprisals. This is undoubtedly a reality and could complicate large-scale investment by Cubans living abroad.

If the US and Cuba do not return to the path of normalisation, it will be difficult, but not impossible. I would have to elaborate at length to explain, but as things stand, there is already investment of capital by Cubans living abroad in the national economy. Taking these facts into account and as a measure of the truth, I would say that it is possible, even if there is no normalisation of relations between Cuba and the US.

OEP: We must recognise that Cuba’s natural economic environment is the US, given proximity and the fact that it has received most Cuban emigrants. But the US government has been very aggressive toward Cuba, and sanctions have been particularly severe in recent months.

However, Cuba needs to do what it can to promote normalisation. I have learned that Cuban emigrants have capital and could become an important source of funding. But for that to happen, legislative changes are needed. Negotiations must take place to analyse the issue of nationalisations and other pending matters, which must be resolved.

Where possible to exchange investment for assets, via a swap arrangement, this should be done. If we have a hotel with only 10% occupancy, an emigrant could manage the hotel and receive a portion of the profits. There are many options.

It will be very difficult for Cuba to access the needed capital if relations are not repaired and normalisation not achieved. Because capital today is transnational and although many companies would be willing to invest in Cuba, they won’t if they are going to be sanctioned by the US. That is what happens right now.

But we cannot give up; we must seek any positive alternative, without surrendering sovereignty but without being too rigid, because there is no other way to resolve the problems you have raised. External financing is a priority.

The state must undertake a two-year stabilisation process to resolve two key short-term problems: energy and food. It will no longer guarantee the ration card system as in the past; it simply does not have the means. This will help people understand that the socialist Cuba that existed prior to 2026 is no longer viable, and that to maintain it under new conditions requires restructuring the model.

We need to build a social market model. One mistake in recent years has been failing to implement the reforms that many suggested, especially Russia and China, where all forms of production — especially private ones — would have carried greater weight. Cuba was far too slow to implement them.

Today we are doing so when we have no other options. Negotiating under these circumstances is very difficult, because we have to accept many things that would not be accepted at another point in history, above all to save the country.

JCV: As mentioned before, resource allocation is a fundamental problem, a major bottleneck affecting the national economy; so accessing new resources is a matter of urgency. And resolving the debt issue is essential.

I proposed swapping debt for assets and investment; this is entirely possible and probably the most viable option. There are many resources and capabilities that are currently underused, and many are falling into disrepair.

Of course, this must always be done rigorously yet swiftly; we must ensure that the pressures of the moment do not lead to ill-advised decisions affecting the nation’s sovereignty and control over strategic resources.

The Cuban diaspora is part of the nation. Part of it possesses capital and entrepreneurial capacity, although this is not the majority, which consists of wage earners. Everyone, however, should be able to participate in some way; the former, through investments, technology, trade, markets, and so on.

This must be part of a shared commitment. All guarantees should be provided transparently and without hesitation, establishing laws and regulations on what can and cannot be done. In other words, broad and clearly defined scopes and safeguards, in line with a national project embraced by all, including, hopefully, those who have been hostile. This is a highly topical political issue.

The short answer is: yes, they should play an important role, without sacrificing their individual interests. There will always be risks, but we must face them with intelligence and resolve. The most important thing is people’s interests and wellbeing. Is it difficult to reconcile all this? Yes. Is it impossible? No. It is perhaps the most important political challenge today.

The most desirable scenario involves negotiations with the US, as it could significantly change the situation, help overcome the economic crisis, and so on. I believe the government has worked and continues working intensively on this, now with the benefit of years of experience, historical lessons, past mistakes, and so on. But the question must always be: what to negotiate, and to what end?

Here the answer must be crystal clear. We need a broad position that includes many sensitive decisions, but containing very clear points on what is non-negotiable under any circumstances. It has been said that sovereignty and internal order are non-negotiable; I agree. Cuba’s internal affairs are a matter for Cubans — for all Cubans — and them alone.

The US government must be aware and confident that Cuba is willing to progress and put a lot on the table, except what is non-negotiable. This could lead to a relationship based on respect and mutual benefit. However, will the US government — and this administration in particular — be willing to establish a suitable framework for negotiation?

Cuba must work toward this, but must prepare for the worst-case scenario, including unwanted military aggression. Sovereignty, properly understood, is non-negotiable; this requires no academic justification. It is the historic will of a people demonstrated for almost two centuries. Now is no different. Negotiation, yes — as much as possible, realistic, and comprehensive. But under no circumstances can we accept impositions and concessions on sovereignty.

Since 2011, successive reform programs have been adopted, agreements reached at PCC congresses, and a new constitution and new laws approved. However, the reform process has stalled and, to some extent, seems to have lost its way. What reasons are there to think things will be different going forward?

JTC: I would say there are many reasons and none at all.

The first reason for thinking differently is the international context Cuba finds itself in, which has changed dramatically and creates significant stress for the country. This situation could speed up the reform process and prevent repeating past mistakes.

Second, there is the constant threat from the US and its intentions to change the country, according to their own vision of what needs to change. Obviously, it is a driving force behind this reform process, and ensures we do not take a step backwards.

Third is the economic and social situation, the polycrisis we are immersed in and constantly suffering. Without reform, it will be very difficult to emerge from this polycrisis.

We must also understand that this government has been through a learning process. Today, it is in a situation with very few alternatives other than following a reform path that was already broadly mapped out but never followed; instead, it was halted and reversed. Now we must implement these reforms, and that is undoubtedly another reason. There is a learning process here, and that matters a great deal.

OEP: The model that is being proposed is different. While we have approved dozens of programs, reached thousands of agreements, and taken stock of PCC congresses, the constitution, the laws, etc, the country has still not made progress. Obstacles preventing progress include fear of the private sector, which is an ideological problem.

Today must be different because, I reiterate, Cuba is alone in the world. Never before have we faced such a moment of multiple crises. We have a financial crisis, a food crisis, prolonged blackouts, problems with medicine, and transportation problems, all at once.

A Cuban family today sleeps poorly, eats poorly, walks to work, has low wages, and faces high inflation. No other time in Cuba’s recent history — since the 1990s — has seen such a turbulent and complicated situation.

If we want to save not just the model, but the country, we have to do things differently. If we keep doing the same thing, we will continue redistributing misery. If new policies require constitutional changes, we must make them. If we have to remove the constitutional clause prohibiting the concentration of income and property, then so be it.

As long as the private sector is legitimate, as long as it is legal, and as long as it provides certain goods and services, why be afraid of it? The state’s strength lies in its ability to tax these activities and redistribute revenue throughout society.

For me, the only difference is that we must build a country with a market.

JCV: We have reached a make-or-break situation: external aggression on one side (which is not just the blockade) and internal shortcomings on the other, including the tremendous delay in implementing comprehensive and far-reaching economic reforms. That is one of the main errors; we have been arguing this for at least three decades, when it became evident that the bureaucratic planning economic model had run its course.

If one reads documents approved at party congresses since 2011, and the 2019 constitution, it becomes clear that this reality was understood from the outset, and that documents were approved that provided the needed political and legal scope for reform. However, inertia, misunderstandings, dogmatism and vested interests have been a constant obstacle.

What is new is that this has been acknowledged and there is the political will to move forward despite that resistance. It will be difficult, but the journey has already begun. We must be wary of that Cuban maxim since colonial times: “Acknowledged, but not obeyed.”

We must overcome entrenched obstacles, as strong as they are diffuse, making them so difficult to eliminate. They will always be present, but with consensus, essential popular participation, accountability and effective leadership, we can do it..

It is difficult to declare oneself a pessimist or optimist in the face of such a complex process. We must be realistic and, as Antonio Gramsci said, perhaps move forward with pessimism of the mind but always optimism of the heart.

Algorithms of control and the politics of digital liberation

By Rezgar Akrawi

Published 29 June, 2026

Never before in human history has a small minority wielded this degree of control over the majority, and with such speed and silence. No armies march in the streets, no laws are proclaimed in parliaments; instead, algorithms operate in the shadows, shaping your consciousness, work, opportunities and future. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most powerful tool humanity has ever produced. The question is not whether it will change the world; it already has. The question is in whose interest will it change it?

Since these ideas were first put forward in my book, Capitalist AI, Challenges for the Left and Possible Alternatives, the pace of AI development has accelerated in a striking and unprecedented manner. Major monopoly-driven corporations in the United States, China and elsewhere have released new models that far surpass their predecessors, now capable of performing tasks once exclusive to humans: medicine, law, programming, creative writing, scientific research and beyond.

Alongside this technological acceleration, generative AI and autonomous intelligent agents have emerged as a qualitatively new development, transforming these systems into independent actors capable of executing chains of decisions without direct human oversight. This relentless acceleration has made it necessary to revisit and further develop my ideas.

The more the capabilities of this technology expand and deepen, the more control over it concentrates in fewer hands, and the wider the gap grows between those who own it and those subjected to it. This equation is not an inevitable fate; it is the product of political and economic choices that can be changed. The trade war over chips and AI has revealed a plain truth: this technology has become a first-order geopolitical weapon, with great powers treating it as an instrument of domination and control. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this is the accelerating military deployment of AI in identifying human targets, conducting combat operations and making life-and-death decisions, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

For the first time in history, it has become genuinely possible to produce what the majority needs with minimal human effort, and provide goods, services and knowledge in abundance without intensive wage labour or traditional bureaucratic structures. Yet these possibilities are constrained and redirected to boost corporate profit, cut wages and deepen class domination.

The proliferation of digital applications, widespread automation and dismantling of market intermediaries in certain sectors all show society possesses tools that could allow for a horizontal, participatory and community-based reorganisation of the economy. Yet this transformation remains shackled by the monopolistic structure that controls technology and directs it toward profit maximisation.

This places a historic responsibility on emancipatory and social-justice forces. They have no choice but to enter the battle over AI and technology with a clear project and real capabilities. The question of who directs AI, and in whose interest, is not an abstract philosophical question — it will determine the shape of the world inherited by the sons and daughters of coming generations.

The gap between left-wing forces and the empire of digital capitalism resembles the gulf between an ant and a huge elephant: on one side, left-wing and social-justice organisations largely lacking financial resources, technical infrastructure and specialised expertise; on the other, monopoly-driven corporate states possessing full control over the digital sphere, data centres spanning continents and armies of engineers and researchers.

Yet this enormous disparity does not mean the battle is decided. When the ant organises well and knows where to strike, it is capable of unsettling the elephant and altering the struggle’s course. Proceeding from this reality, the battle requires clear policies, tactics and tangible tools. The following sections sketch the contours of a left-wing vision, addressing the most important fronts of this struggle.

Developing progressive AI systems

What is possible now

Developing neutral, democratic and open-source systems is fundamental for countering state and corporate dominance over AI. These systems must be managed independently and kept as far as possible from the interests of monopoly capital, to ensure they serve the public rather than private power.

Open-source systems give the public and emancipatory forces an opportunity to participate in developing technology in ways that reflect their values. Any individual or group may freely access the source code, understand it, and modify or improve it. This approach strengthens collective ownership and innovation, and partially dismantles the grip of monopoly-driven corporations. Openness to public scrutiny also reduces the risks of hidden manipulation and ideological steering, making these systems more trustworthy and independent from narrow corporate interests.

Recent years have seen notable developments in this direction. Open-source communities have proven capable to build advanced AI models that compete with what market-ruling corporations produce. Recent experiments have shown building advanced models does not require enormous budgets, opening the door to building socially-oriented models with more modest resources.

Global left-wing and social-justice forces need to support open-source AI projects, adopt them, and direct them toward emancipatory goals — something that remains largely absent from the official programs of most left parties and movements.

Second: what is required in the long term

Left-wing and social-justice forces must globally coordinate to develop and put forward emancipatory alternatives and transparent applications of AI. The goal is guaranteeing technology becomes collective property subject to full public oversight, and oriented toward respect for human rights, equality, social justice and intellectual pluralism.

Rather than remaining the exclusive preserve of wealthy states and large monopoly-driven corporations, AI must become a tool for the majority. One that contributes to solving global and local problems: combating poverty, exploitation and class inequality; achieving equality and advancing democracy; confronting climate change; and developing more inclusive and equitable educational and health systems. In this way, AI is transformed into a global emancipatory project that redefines the relationship between humanity and technology, opening the space for a new model that places technology in the service of people.

AI in the service of manual and intellectual workers

AI, if directed in a socialist and social-justice-oriented manner, can be a powerful tool for human liberation and social justice. It can analyse complex social problems and offer effective solutions to reduce economic disparities and class injustice. Achieving this goal is not automatic; it requires directing its mechanisms and capabilities toward addressing the roots of poverty, unemployment, lack of basic services and social discrimination. Advanced data analysis can also monitor social inequalities, identifying the most deprived communities and formulating equitable policies to address structural imbalances in wealth and services distribution.

Yet documented studies prove that hiring algorithms developed by large corporate players reproduce the racial and class biases embedded in the historical data on which they were trained. This discrimination does not mean programmers were consciously racist; it means the logic of exploitation was encoded into the algorithms through data that reflects the reality of societies built on discrimination and class domination. Dismantling this discrimination requires political change and democratic oversight, not technical adjustment.

AI can be a powerful tool for supporting labour organising and trade union struggle. It can help manual and intellectual workers build digitally-enabled unions and solidarity networks, and strengthen their capacity to negotiate with employers and demand their rights. Experiences of tech-powered unions in Latin America and Europe demonstrate that deploying digital tools to coordinate labour struggle multiplies workers’ capacity for rapid, organised collective action. These tools can also expose corporate practices that exploit workers or suppress union organising, and shed light on the policies of authoritarian regimes that refuse to recognise workers’ right to organise and strike.

AI must be a tool for freeing human beings from routine and exhausting labour, while guaranteeing dignified, stable employment with fair wages. In this model, the labour market is transformed into a more just and open space, where gender, racial, religious and age discrimination can be eliminated through evaluation systems grounded in competence and skill, freed from the social biases that reproduce existing class structures.

Liberating science from monopoly

Rather than becoming a tool that weakens human capacities and produces generations excessively dependent on technology, AI can be redirected to become a means of scientific emancipation and creative growth. It should not replace human thinking; it should expand human capabilities, enable access to advanced knowledge and free up time from routine tasks.

Emancipatory open-source AI systems can stimulate critical thinking, both scientifically and creatively, by encouraging users to explore knowledge independently through questions that prompt analysis and inference, rather than passive reception of ready-made answers without scrutiny.

Current developments reveal a glaring contradiction. The systems that have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to accelerate scientific discovery remain the preserve of those who can pay, and governed by the logic of corporate profitability rather than human need. In practice, diseases that do not generate sufficient profit go untreated. Renewable energy research beneficial to humanity is delayed in favour of research that serves corporate interests. This contradiction makes clear why the question of who owns AI cannot be separated from the question of what it discovers.

Digital cooperatives

Cooperative AI projects can be built, drawing on manual and intellectual workers, engineers, researchers and social activists, with the aim of harnessing technology for the common good. Participation must not just mean their presence as end-users of technology designed by others; the aim is to involve them from the outset in defining the problem, setting priorities and shaping the solution.

Factory workers know from daily experience which tasks drain their physical energy without adding real value. Nurses know which administrative burdens steal their time from patients. Teachers know which bureaucratic procedures prevent them from devoting themselves to genuine education. This accumulated lived knowledge is design knowledge no less important than technical expertise; ignoring it produces systems that solve phantom problems or serve goals remote from the needs of those they claim to serve. This is evident in the Data Workers Inquiry project, where data workers designed their own algorithms to expose corporate exploitation, and in the Decidim platform, built by citizens and engineers together to manage resources locally.

In a genuine digital cooperative, manual and intellectual workers, trade unions and local communities are the owners of the tool they use, rather than mere subscribers paying fees for access.

Toward community sovereignty over technology

Transparent and democratic community oversight of technology is essential. To achieve it, digital power must be redistributed so that technology becomes community-owned and deployed in its service, rather than wielded as a corporate instrument. This requires building participatory institutions and platforms that allow the public to examine how algorithms are designed and applied. It also requires establishing elected popular oversight bodies, at both the local and international levels, with broad representation encompassing workers, academics, human rights advocates and technical experts, to ensure fairness and accountability in the development and operation of AI systems.

Despite the relative value of European legislation in the field of AI, its impact is limited because it operates within the same market logic that produced the problems, frequently resulting in the legal entrenchment of monopoly domination rather than its genuine dismantling. What people need goes beyond these steps, toward genuine community oversight endowed with real authority.

Laws must be enacted and binding guidelines issued that compel developers to embed values of justice and equality at the design stage, with community review imposed on all systems prior to their release. Oversight bodies must be granted genuine powers to review algorithms on an ongoing basis, monitor any embedded biases that could lead to discrimination or exploitation, and retain the capacity to intervene and impose binding regulatory standards.

From the logic of profit to the logic of need

When fierce competition between monopolistic corporations and major powers intensifies in the AI race, the heaviest price will not be paid by shareholders or executive directors. It will be paid by the millions of workers whose jobs automation destroys. This is not speculation; its has already begun across numerous sectors. The urgent need arises to rethink the entire logic of production and distribution from the ground up.

Reorganising production and distribution is a fundamental pillar of the left’s vision for AI. This technology can be used to build systems of democratic collective planning grounded in reliable data and oriented toward social need, allowing resources to be directed efficiently toward society’s requirements. These systems rely on careful analysis of demand and consumption, producing necessary goods and services according to real needs, while avoiding the chronic overproduction that characterises the capitalist system.

Recent global supply chain crises have exposed the fragility of globalised corporate production and its dependence on speculation and monopoly, opening a real discussion on the need for alternative planning models grounded in reliable, democratically governed information. AI can play a decisive role in restructuring supply chains, reducing waste, directing production toward underserved regions and enhancing environmental sustainability. Intelligent logistics systems can also enable more efficient distribution of goods and services and identify optimal routes for reducing carbon emissions.

Moreover, AI can bring about a radical transformation in socially-oriented cooperative production, enabling cooperatives and community enterprises to benefit from intelligent technologies to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs and ensure equitable resource distribution among members. Technology can serve as a tool for building a solidarity economy, helping poor communities achieve economic independence through shared production and equitable distribution of available resources, freed from the grip of monopoly capital.

Dismantling algorithmic patriarchy

Left-wing and social-justice forces must struggle for AI systems that uphold gender justice and contribute to achieving full equality. In 2024, a comprehensive academic study testing AI systems in résumé screening across nine different professions found these systems favoured women’s names in only 11% of cases.

This algorithmic bias is not an isolated technical error. It is a reflection of women’s absence from the design and development process, and an expression of the male-dominant logic encoded into the technology industry, where women still constitute less than 15% of AI researchers at the world’s leading technology companies. UN Women has described how AI systems learn from data saturated with stereotypes, reproducing gender biases and restricting opportunities, particularly in employment, credit and judicial decisions. UNESCO documented alarming evidence in its 2024 study of the prevalence of regressive male gender stereotypes in generative AI. A graver challenge lies in the endeavours of certain authoritarian states with patriarchal religious systems to build their own AI frameworks, with the aim of entrenching male-dominated value systems and consolidating control over women through more sophisticated and harder-to-resist tools.

These systems deliberately encode gender discrimination into their core objectives, from social surveillance to restricting women’s digital presence and imposing behavioural standards derived from conservative religious interpretations. Confronting this requires left-wing, social-justice and feminist forces to wage struggles on two fronts: challenging the algorithmic bias of monopoly-driven corporations and opposing projects of religious patriarchal automation that seek to convert technology into an instrument for reproducing male power under the cover of national sovereignty and cultural relativism.

Algorithms must be trained using comprehensive and diverse data that fully reflects women’s experiences and roles beyond stereotypes. Governments must be pressured to adopt legislation compelling companies to prioritise gender diversity in their technical teams. Masculine-coded language must be removed from AI systems and gender-neutral language developed to help undermine structural discrimination.

Halting AI’s militarisation

The military sector concentrates the largest investment in AI globally. Autonomous weapons capable of deciding to kill without human intervention have become a reality. AI is deployed today to identify human targets and conduct combat operations across many regions, amid an accelerating retreat of human oversight over these decisions. This is not an abstract ethical question; it is fundamentally a class question. Whoever owns these weapons possesses an unprecedented capacity to subjugate populations and suppress resistance.

Every effort must be made to redirect AI toward promoting world peace. Left-wing and social-justice movements can lead global initiatives to pressure governments and international institutions to enact strict legislation preventing AI development for military purposes. AI should equally be employed to document war crimes and human rights violations, contributing to the accountability of authoritarian regimes, states and corporations that seek to militarise technology. Making the public an active party in the struggle against technology’s militarisation means building a global resistance movement capable of ending this inhumane use of technology.

AI and digital repression

AI is being deployed to erode democracy rather than strengthen it, through algorithmic manipulation techniques that feed extremism and deepen political polarisation for commercial and political purposes, and through forgery and disinformation tools that have become more sophisticated and harder to detect.

Current developments reveal a disturbing and accelerating expansion in the deployment of these technologies within the repressive apparatus of authoritarian regimes. Facial recognition systems are used extensively to monitor protests and political gatherings. The automated analysis of digital content has become a systematic tool for targeting activists, dissidents and journalists. Amnesty International has documented how certain states weaponise social media and digital tools to suppress youth protests.

This digital repression takes multiple and increasingly dangerous forms. At one end lies systematic digital demoralisation, fed by algorithms designed to spread a sense of powerlessness and futility. Further along comes digital arrest, through account restrictions and deletions on spurious grounds. At the extreme end sits digital assassination, by completely erasing dissidents’ online existence. There is also voluntary self-censorship, where activists impose restrictions on themselves out of fear of bans or account closures. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases in which technologies sold by Western companies were used to track and arrest dissidents, making these companies partners in human rights violations.

A struggle must be waged to establish strict international and domestic legal frameworks criminalising AI’s use to manipulate public opinion and violate human rights. We also need global solidarity networks to monitor violations, the boycott and blacklisting of companies that sell surveillance technologies to authoritarian regimes, and the development of data encryption and communications security technologies to protect activists and dissidents.

AI and environmental collapse

There is a profound contradiction that demands frank confrontation. Training large AI models consumes enormous quantities of energy and water and their operations produce carbon emissions equivalent to millions of flights annually. Reliable reports reveal some major data centres consume enough water to supply entire cities. AI, in its current corporate form, does not help solve the environmental crisis; it deepens it, even as companies claim to deploy it for sustainability. Any serious emancipatory alternative must place this contradiction as a core priority.

AI must contribute to environmental economic planning, with its analytical capabilities deployed to regulate production according to society’s actual needs. Socially-oriented management models can achieve more efficient resource use, reduced waste and technological development directed toward transformative environmental solutions, such as improving renewable energy systems and sustainable water management.

AI’s use in projects that destroy the environment must be prohibited. The licensing of any AI technology must be linked to an assessment of its environmental impact. Alongside this ,we need intelligent systems to monitor corporate compliance with environmental standards. This requires developing systems that reduce excessive energy consumption and advance reliance on renewable energy. Within an emancipatory framework, this technology can be redirected to become an effective instrument for protecting natural resources and building an economy to serve society and the planet together.

Toward a militant digital left international

AI is a mirror of the society that produces it, accurately reflecting the power relations that control its direction, funding and priorities. When monopoly-driven corporations, great powers and authoritarian states are the ones building and financing this technology, they build it according to their own logic: the logic of maximising profits, deepening class domination and political control, and reproducing more sophisticated forms of exploitation and repression that are harder to resist. It is no coincidence that the military and security sector is the largest investor in AI development globally; it is an explicit expression of capitalism’s true priorities in its digital phase.

Yet this mirror is not an inevitable fate. Either AI continues as an instrument of class domination in the hands of a minority that uses it to control production, distribution, consciousness and politics, or we make it emancipatory collective property that liberates the majority from the burdens of exploitation. Achieving this is neither easy nor close at hand, given the enormous current imbalance between the left and digital capitalism.

This is a long-term, cumulative project requiring vast human, technical and organisational energies, as well as time, perseverance and the capacity to endure setbacks and move beyond them. The difficulty of the task, however, does not imply its impossibility. The left’s history is replete with struggles that appeared impossible and concluded in radical transformations.

The digital left that simultaneously masters work in the field and excels in deploying digital space is the left best positioned to confront capitalism in its digital phase. At the global level, this means building a digital left international capable of confronting the planetary hegemony of digital capitalism with its own tools and in the language of its era, bringing together left-wing and social-justice forces around the world in a shared project that places technology in the service of the masses, emancipation, justice and equality.

What I have outlined is not a romantic dream; it is a real political battle unfolding now. Every day that passes without left-wing and social-justice forces engaging it with awareness and organisation is a day in which the structures of digital domination become more entrenched and harder to dismantle. Technology has never been neutral, but today it is less neutral than ever. What we build today — however small it may appear — is the seed of the future we want.

Rezgar Akrawi is an independent leftist who is interested in the left and the technological revolution, and works as an expert in system development and e-governance. He is coordinator of the Center for Marxist and Leftist Studies and Research.

This work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0